ABSTRACT

Acutely sensitive to the power of the press, the occupying forces clearly located the source of potential resistance in an urban environment. To a regime for whom propaganda was an essential element in the realization of a long-term project, it was evident that cities and towns held the key to success: urban spaces were where people congregated and exchanged information; where the imagined mass audience could materialize and see the effect of propaganda on fellow-citizens, and where the technology for printing and publishing was by tradition concentrated. In order to reach and affect their intended readership, those who wrote, designed and published aerial propaganda for France in the Second World War had to create categories of imagined recipients based on pre-war perceptions, and what evidence of reception reached the UK. It is important to realize that the pattern of distribution across France had to conform to British needs as well as those of the target readership in Occupied France.